Every one of these poems reads like a subtweet of the president. Le Guin’s footnotes are great, too: In response to “having a lot of things, a lot of money: / shameless theives. / Surely their way / isn’t the way,” she writes, “So much for capitalism.”)

There’s been a lot of anti-Thoreau sentiment in the past years (heck, Kathryn Schulz published an article in the New Yorker called “Pond Scum”), and I didn’t even think I liked Thoreau, but Walls does a beautiful job of painting a portrait of a writer who was deeply rooted in and connected to his place, who tried his best to carve out a “deliberate” life for himself. (Pair it with NYRB’s reader edition of Thoreau’s journal, which I’ve been reading daily.)

Certainly my favorite book cover of the year, the graphic designer’s memoir drops you right into a kid’s eye view of 1970s Greenwich Village. With it’s chunked sections and hand-drawn illustrations, it gave me the same kind of quick, skippy joy I get when reading Vonnegut.

Zweig wrote this before his suicide, while exiled in Brazil during World War II. To get Montaigne, Zweig said, “you should not be too young, too deprived of experience and life’s deceptions, and it is precisely a generation like ours, cast by fate into the cataract of the world’s turmoil, to whom the freedom and consistency of his thought conveys the most precious aid.”

I read this book twice: first, when Alan asked for a blurb, and second, when I offered to interview him at Bookpeople upon its publication. It’s a brisk, 150-page plea for sanity. Alan is a rare writer: one who not only genuinely loves to write books, but also genuinely loves teaching.

I had a couple of magical Manguso readings this year: On a summer trip to San Francisco, I bought this in the morning at Christopher’s Books in Potrero, and then read most of it later that afternoon in the Yerba Buena Gardens. Later in the year, I found a used copy of Ongoingness: The End of A Diary in a market in Antigua, Guatemala, and read that in one sitting, too.

I’ve been watching The Room for years, and I first read Bissell on the subject in Magic Hours. This was a total behind-the-scenes trip, and it is no surprise to me that the movie based on it has gotten great reviews. (I still haven’t seen it.)

A short, brilliant book about film editing that has quite a few lessons for writers, too. (It would make an excellent companion to Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies.) I first read about Murch in Lawrence Weschler’s book about his adventures in astrophysics, Waves Passing In The Night, which I picked randomly off my local library’s New Arrivals shelf.

This is not only a beautifully produced illustrated history of Friedrich Froebel’s institution, it also presents a compelling case that kindergarten influenced the origins of abstract art and modern architecture. (The juxtaposition of children’s art with paintings and blueprints reminds me of David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge.)

I learned about this 1937 bestseller while reading Will Schwalbe’s Books For Living. It’s basically a book about the ancient Chinese art of chilling out and living a good life. (One thing: If you pick it up, just skip chapter 8 and Lin Yutang’s sexist views.) The book celebrates other writers who got me through the year — Thoreau, Whitman, Lao Tzu. I find it fitting that the only other person I knew who’d ever read it was the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who said in 2010, “If you read 1 book this year… make it this… no words to describe.)

I read this one, then I read his collected diaries, Theft By Finding, and then I read the visual compendium, which might have even been the most interesting of the three books, but I’m listing this one because it’s hilarious, although with the interstitial fiction bits, it’s sort of like one of those classic 90s hip-hop albums where you skip the “skit” tracks.

I loved this novel, which runs on the voice of the main character, an old preacher named John Ames, who is writing a letter to his seven-year-old son about his life and struggles with his faith. Beautiful book.

Some people question how much of this travelogue is true, but who the hell really cares when the writing is so delicious? Steinbeck himself wrote about the impossibility of capturing a nation based on one trip.

Holt’s work, first published in 1967, had more of an impact on how I parent and how I think about education than any other book I read this year. His message is simple: children are learning animals, and the best way to teach them is to trust them and get out of their way. Still feels radical.

It’s tough to hit that sweet spot in the venn diagram of books kids love that adults love to read, and it’s just as to tough to wrap up a beloved trilogy. I spent a lot of bedtimes reading these books.

No book gave me more pleasure this year. When my son Owen was born, all I seemed to be able to read was oldNancy comics. After my son Jules was born, it was Moomin. These comics are so, so wonderful. They belong in everyone’s library.

A book that made me rethink the way I operate online.You know this is an important book because it seems like every week there’s an additional chapter to be written in it. Ronson’s writing is smart and hugely entertaining — if I hadn’t already read Shamed, The Psychopath Test probably would’ve been on this list, too.

Joe Hill called this“the Moby-Dick of parenting books,” and he’s right: it’s too-long and it takes forever to get through, but you get taken somewhere, and you’re really glad you read it. I would lie in bed at the end of the day, exhausted, listening to my loud newborn honk and coo and wheeze and snore in the next room, read about the struggles of all the parents and their stories in the book, and I’d think, “Shit, man, I can handle tomorrow.”

I don’t know why these books work for me — they’re like stumbling on the Twitter feed of the most fascinating art buff, and scrolling and scrolling, but yet, they build and build towards something. I read them at night, and they put me into a kind of hypnotic state. (I got through about 20-30 pages until I fell asleep.) I consider these one big book and would love to see a collected edition of all four.

The perfect blend of subject matter (dealing with aging parents), an artist at the top of her game, and audience (boomers dealing with aging parents, millennials watching their parents deal with aging parents, etc.) For everyone with parents.

Every person I talk to about this book says the same thing:Why is it so good? It shouldn’t be so good. The prose is so clear and the story so streamlined that it just goes by. Definitely one I’ll be re-reading.

Very rich, and definitely a series I’ll be re-reading. The writing is mostly better than the art, which is downright spotty and confusing in spots (except for McKean’s consistently brilliant covers). A classic for a reason.

Wendy is the artist friend whose work makes me the most jealous. Beautiful book.

Lynda Barry, Syllabus – LB’s workshop syllabi collected into a book that feels like one of her students’ composition books. Perfect for teachers and wannabe writers.

And here are 20 more very good books, in no particular order (if history is precedent, and Stephanie Zacharek is right that the end of lists like this is where the “oddball magic happens,” in a few years, many of the books in my top 20 will seem dull to me later, while many of the following books will shine, and beg to be re-read):

This book couldn’t have been more perfectly matched to my tastes: it’s a great story, a Western, it’s funny, it’s violent, it features a digressive narrator, it has tight, short chapters, and it’s 300 pages long. I heard from at least a half a dozen people who read this book on my recommendation and loved it.

When I was writing Steal Like An Artist, I wasn’t really aware that it would eventually be shelved in the self-help section. So after finding myself there, I became increasingly interested in self-help as a form. One of my favorite things about this book is that it riffs on self-help books without totally abandoning the structure of many self-help books—in each chapter, there’s usually a story, mentions of a few studies, and a lesson, or extrapolation. (The Malcolm Gladwell-ish “story-study-lesson” formula.) It’s a slick trick, and it works. Burkeman is also a good follow online: @oliverburkeman

As I mentioned before, this was not an easy year. There were many, many nights when I sighed at my Kindle, sighed at the books on my nightstand, and then picked up a Nancy book and read until I fell asleep. Go out and buy this or the second collection so that Fantagraphics will print another one!

Once again, a book with self-help ties: the novel’s structure “mimics that of the cheap self-help books sold at sidewalk stands all over South Asia, alongside computer manuals and test-prep textbooks. Each chapter begins with a rule—‘Work for Yourself,’ ‘Don’t Fall in Love,’ ‘Be Prepared to Use Violence’—and expertly evolves into a narrative.” The whole thing is written in second person, and none of the characters have names. It might sound gimmicky, but it doesn’t come off that way — the execution is pretty perfect, and really moving.

I started meditating last year, so I got interested in Zen Buddhism. I had this book on my shelf for years, but only read it recently. A lot of my favorite artists have Zen backgrounds, but it was really surprising to me how much of this book applies to creativity and art. (Of course, half of it makes no sense to me at all.) Contrast Suzuki’s line, “When you give up, when you no longer want something, or when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something,” with Andy Warhol: “As soon as you stop wanting something you get it.”

And then there’s my favorite line, which I quoted in Show Your Work!: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Another breakthrough for me this year: realizing the value of re-reading books. So I’m doing something out of the ordinary and putting a re-read book on my list. In a way, the book was a kind of dark therapy for me—as I increasingly found my inbox stuffed full of emails from desperate aspiring artists, there was Miss Lonelyhearts to suffer a breakdown so I didn’t have to. Everyone who has ever though about dishing out advice on a mass scale (is there such a species? oh dear) should have to read this first.

Did I underline more sentences in a book this year? Probably not. My friend Kio wrote of the first essay, “the end of each sentence leaves me gasping the way a kiss can begin in a gasp.” What a wonderful collection of lectures.

In many ways, 2013 was my Year of Eno. Listening to Another Green World while working, Music for Airports while meditating, watching his lectures, following the Oblique Strategies — Eno had such a big influence on me that I started Show Your Work! with his concept of “Scenius.” This book is really two books: 300 or so pages are the diary Eno kept in 1995, and 100 or so pages are the “swollen appendices,” little mini-essays on various topics. Sadly, it’s out-of-print, and used copies are very expensive, but it’s worth tracking down. I downloaded a PDF online and read it on my iPad in GoodReader, which was an interesting experience in itself.

“We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”

“Small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught–nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”

“All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you.”

“‘But, Dennis, do you think Mr Slattery’d be teaching it to us if it was really about anal sex?’ ’ What does Mr Slattery know?’ Dennis scoffs. ‘You think he’s ever taken his wife up the road less travelled?’”

“Cahill lived in the Flats with about twenty other guys in a place that used to be an Irish bar called Fado. At the back of the bar was the Cuyahoga River, good for protection since zombies didn’t cross the river. They didn’t crumble into dust, they were just stupid as bricks and they never built a boat or a bridge or built anything. Zombies were the ultimate trash.”

“Xerography—every man’s brain-picker—heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simple xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one—instant steal!”

“Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.” (Emerson)

“There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees.

Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull.”

“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”

“Everything is invented. Language. Childhood. Careers. Relationships. Religion. Philosophy. The Future. They are not there for the plucking. They don’t exist in some natural state. They must be invented by people. And that, of course, is a great thing. Don’t mope in your room. Go invent something. That is the American message.”

“When you listen to early Black Sabbath, you know the main difference between them & you is that somebody bought them guitars and microphones. They’re not smarter than you; they’re not deeper than you; they’re a fuck of a lot richer than you, but other than that, it’s like listening to the inside of your own mind. So when they write songs, they sing about wizards. And witches. And robots.”

Hugh’s said the book is “advice I wish I had when I was in my early 20s.” The book sprung from his piece “How To Be Creative,” which was a big deal to me when I found it a year or so ago, specifically for his “Sex and Cash Theory.” Helped me feel better about keeping my day job.